Higher education in Canada: different systems, different perspectives

A topic I was looking for and did not find was Aboriginal education. How institutions have responded to the needs of First Nations, Metis, and Inuit peoples would give the reader a way of understanding in microcosm how postsecondary environments respond to social and economic needs and initiate change. In his discussion of the Saskatchewan scene, Bill Muir notes, "Another issue requiring attention at the national level is Aboriginal postsecondary education, which requires provincial-federal government cooperation" (p. 108). Yet the same article fails even to mention the four Saskatchewan Native Indian Teacher Education Programs (NITEPs) and the catalytic role they have played over the last 20 years in changing the face of Saskatchewan's public education. With the exception of Aron Senkpiel's piece on the Yukon and Gail Hilyer's on the Northwest Territories, the reader is left wondering if this kind of omission helps to define the problem. Such editorial decisions reflect more than just taste or attitude. A brief look at the notes on the contributors helps us to appreciate the perspective. These writers for the most part are academics who during their careers became administrators of university systems, as well as advisors to government, writers of many reports, and members of provincial and federal commissions and councils of education. Many of the authors, now retired, including Ron Baker who wrote the piece on Prince Edward Island, were instrumental in creating the complex systems that they describe. Baker blithely quotes some of his own anecdotes and witty punch lines and even refers to himself in the third person as the first president in 1969 of the University of Prince Edward Island. Some might say that such a pretense of objectivity characterizes the history of Canadian education, which has always been known for its "personalities" -- almost exclusively men -- for whom we like to use words like vigor and drive (rather than hard-nosed and ambitious) in the hero-in-history approach to the narratives of institutional development. We note, for example, that Gordon Mowat, Professor Emeritus of Educational Administration, University of Alberta, who contributed the article on Alberta "has had many important government positions in education in Alberta" (p. 347). In the article about Alberta there is an odd table listing the deputy ministers and ministers of education and advanced education from 1945 to 1992 and the "chairmen" of the Alberta Colleges Commis